Crumbling ‘faster than overbaked lamington’
Unmitigated disaster for the visitors
CRUMBLING “faster than an overbaked lamington” – that’s how some of the UK media is seeing the England collapse unfolding this Ashes series so far.
England is fighting to keep its Ashes hopes alive at the Adelaide Oval, but the visitors’ woes look set to continue after – despite at one stage being 3-150 – a final total of 236 saw Australia cruising at the crease to end day three.
Put simply by The Telegraph chief cricket writer Scyld Berry, it is “the toothless v the ruthless”.
“The object of the exercise for Australia however, once James Anderson joined Stuart Broad at the crease, was not to dismiss them.
It was to punch England’s veterans into a corner, and pin them there, and bash them with bouncers and bruise them, before taking England’s 10th and final wicket,” Berry wrote.
“It was painful to watch two of England’s most faithful servants being mugged in the fading light, which might have been metaphorically apt: this is the evening of Anderson’s and Broad’s career.
“Jhye Richardson and Mitchell Starc tore in with the second new ball, and did not bother with anything full, just short balls, rolling back the years to when Bodyline was unleashed for the first time, on this same ground, in 1932-33.”
Another scribe for The Telegraph, chief sports writer Oliver Brown, was similarly mournful of an Ashes series that was “always likely to go badly wrong”.
“A disintegrating Ashes tour can feel like the loneliest place in sport,” he wrote. “The cruelty of the latest mismatch is that England’s players, boiled in the Adelaide heat as their pace attack misfires and their batting crumbles faster than an overbaked Lamington, still have a month of this to go.”
“For now, with 3½ Tests and many dark nights of the soul ahead, England’s only option is to make do and mend. It is not as if they can call on reinforcements from the England Lions, who were intended to provide back-up but who have already flown home.
“They can hardly dispute the health protocols either, with Australia’s rising numbers of Omicron cases threatening to trigger tougher crackdowns over the coming weeks.
“As with the Premier League’s ever-dwindling Christmas schedule, this Ashes series is at the mercy of an endlessly shifting public health picture. But where once the players could find sun-kissed escapes from their on-field turmoil, here they are trapped inside a deepening nightmare.”
For England captain Joe Root, his problems are only multiplying as he looks to manage a bowling attack that has been made to toil to little avail in the searing Adelaide heat.
Independent writer Vithushan Ehantharajah said as much on BT Sport.
“Part of the problem now is that Root has to think about preservation of not just the match situation, which is broadly gone barring a miracle tomorrow morning, but also his attack, who have been flogged the last two Tests ... it already feels like there are a few walking wounded,” he said.
“From a fans perspective you hope they don’t do what they usually do in this situation and bowl Ben Stokes into the ground, because there were a few times when he was running ... he looked like he was struggling a little bit and it needs to be on other people now.”